The timeless flea market in Barão de São João

(lis­ten to the live music played in the mar­ket, that made peo­ple gather from all over and dance)

Algarve has a lot of flea mar­kets and they are famous for their bar­gains. But if you dream of the Sun­day in which you would wan­der the streets of a flea mar­ket, full of col­ors, good music, peo­ple you can’t stop look­ing at and a won­der­ful energy, then the mar­ket of Barão de São João is your thing.

Imag­ine get­ting into the mar­ket and not know­ing where to look first. There is so much to see, so many bar­gains, peo­ple enjoy­ing to sell and make you happy. What you will see are not the locals sell­ing. Or if there are any, they are few.

Every last Sun­day of the month this mar­ket is the meet­ing place of peo­ple all over the world who set­tled for a dif­fer­ent life. Close to basics, close to nature and them­selves. They are all artists. And their hand-made jew­elry is one of the most amaz­ing I have seen. Sil­ver and gold are not present on their table, but what you’ll see is cot­ton strings bracelets, ear rings, sugar-free cook­ies, organic teas, old records and books and peo­ple who seem to NOT hurry any­where. Peo­ple who have won the bat­tle with time. And you don’t see many of those in our world I can assure you.

The mar­ket in Barão de São João is time­less, and actu­ally if you will try to find out what time it is, before you will even start to look for a watch, you will real­ize you have for­got­ten even what day it was.

I have felt in this mar­ket like I was in the 60′ – although I have only read and heard sto­ries about how the Swing­ing Six­ties felt like. This peo­ple were danc­ing free, bare foot, were talk­ing to every stranger and were embrac­ing every smile. I can­not begin to tell you how good that feels to your soul.